So I may be mistaken. But I don't recall it being a particularly political book. I remember it more as a sociological study, how peoples' relations to their families, their communities, and their work are influenced by psychological, economic and cultural values. And vice versa.

Politics and economics must be included in the discussion, of course, and some subjectivity and opinion is inevitable, but I don't recall of any of Ehrenreich's books selling a political program. I do recall she had a leftist outlook, i.e., she felt that our day-to-day lives are governed by the clash and interaction of historical forces, not merely the conspiracies of evildoers trying to steal our freedoms. Not that there isn't a lot of that going on too!

I may be mistaken, but I suspect TB never read it, or any Ehrenreich or any of her fellow lefty sociologists of the time. He didn't have to, he already knew what it was going to say and he already knew it had to be mistaken.

There is a way to scientifically "test", the validity of Ehrenreich's theses, though. In the early 1990s, she wrote about how the middle class was going to psychologically react to a sudden erosion of its prosperity and influence. Well, that day is finally here, perhaps long delayed from when she initially predicted it, but everybody is certainly agreed about middle class decline now. So ask yourself as you read, did BE get it right when she wrote those words 20 years ago? She was making predictions. How well do they hold up? How accurately did they turn out?